WAR! HUH! WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

Absolutely nothing.

Spotty attended one of the many Cindy Sheehan vigils in the Twin Cities last night. All day, songs by Edwin Starr, Arlo Guthrie, and Country Joe and the Fish have been running through his head. Not that Spotty actually heard any of them at the vigil. But Spotty was struck by how gray the crowd was. There were younger people too, and kids, but there were a lot of people who were probably in protests 35 years ago over events at Kent State. Spotty has been thinking a lot about why that was.

The Vietnam protest movement really germinated on college campuses; often the catalysts were vets who returned early in the war and then went to college. There is a similar group today called Operation Truth. Spotty says go take a look at the site.

Spotty recalls that there were watershed events in the history of the war in Vietnam, like the Tet offensive, Kent State, and the Cambodian bombing by US forces, that pushed large groups of people who were having misgivings about the war over into the antiwar camp. Last night felt like such an event.

Perhaps it is because the rhetoric and the dissembling about stay the course and the progress we are making are so eerily and wrenchingly similar to those we heard during the Vietnam war that the generation in its fifties and sixties best understands the deceit and knavery that is afoot.

If Spotty has just described you, he asks that you please pass this on.

Peace.